Re: Can realism be retro-fitted?
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, January 17, 2007, 14:00 |
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On 1/17/07, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> Eric wrote:
> <<
> Wow, fascinating!! Despite <nitpick>(1) his Engl. (L2?) is non-
> idiomatic in places
>
> of course, one doesn't necessarily want idiomatic language in an
> academic paper, does one...?
I wonder whether you're confusing two senses of "idiomatic" -- one
meaning something like "using idioms or sequences of words which are
not necessarily comprehensible just from the meaning of the
constituent words", and one meaning something like "using sequences of
words in the usual manner; using the common way of expressing a given
concept".
Someone saying that a certain proof was "a piece of cake" is idiomatic
in sense 1; someone saying "I saw a dream" last night is unidiomatic
in sense 2 (an idiomatic way would be "I dreamed" or "I had a dream").
I took the "is non-idiomatic in places" to refer to sense 2.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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